This fine radar
There’s another thing that frets me (for want of a better term) about Julian’s “why I didn’t sign the anti-pope letter” article. I mention this again because it seems to me symptomatic of a particular school of anti-atheist tut-tuttery.
It is that it seems kind of frivolous, at bottom. I think that’s probably why the arguments seem unconvincing…it’s because they are! Maybe he didn’t actually have any real reasons, maybe the letter just got on his nerves, and he had to reach for reasons, and it was a big stretch, and the reasons aren’t up to much.
And that makes the whole thing a bit self-regarding. He certainly wasn’t required to sign the letter, but for actually arguing that the letter and the people behind it are wrong and bad and ugly, I think he should have felt a responsibility to come up with something real, or not do it. I don’t think he did come up with anything real. He doesn’t even say why the letter and the protests are “creating divisions” more than any other letter or protest or other political activity – he just asserts that they are. I wonder if he really even believes that, or just thought it was the kind of thing you say when you take a dislike to a political view and can’t really explain why.
And here’s the thing. This is not a subject to be frivolous about. This isn’t some fad, you know. The pope is real, and he does real harm. He does the kind of harm that was done to Miranda Celeste Hale, for instance; he does it to millions of children – not personally, but institutionally. He does harm to women whose husbands are infected with the Aids virus; he does harm to women who need abortions; he does harm to people who would like to limit the number of children they have. These are not small things – these are things that mess up people’s lives.
Yet the great and the good in the UK are treating him as if he were a lovely auld fella. That means there really is a need to hear from people who say no he isn’t. I don’t see how that can be done other than by doing it. I think the only way to say the pope is not a lovely auld fella is to say it. Given that – I think it’s just self-regarding and self-indulgent and generally self-obsessed to worry about how groupy it all is, or whether the people doing it are having too much fun or not, or whether it will turn ugly some day. It’s over-scrupulous – and making a kind of parade of it. Get me, I have this fine radar that spots moral problems that the peasants don’t see.
That’s not a very nice thing to say, but I think it’s true.
It’s really a catch-22. If we speak up at all then we’re being strident and divisive and hysterical and such; if we don’t then we get ignored and considered insigificant or told that whatever it is we’ve a problem with obviously isn’t that big a deal since we haven’t got any support from the greater community.
That this perception is manipulated by the religious is understandable – they’re just being dishonest in order to protect themselves, as they’ve done for centuries – but that people like Baggini and the gaggle of deferential-to-religion faitheists are assisting them in this kind of intellectual dishonesty is as disappointing as it is confusing.
I just don’t understand why they are trying to protect the church, particularly when Ratzinger has said what he’s said about atheists.
This lack of substance seems to be characteristic of a whole genre of new-atheist bashing, from Chris Mooney to Karl Giberson to endless others. When you dislike something but can’t really back up your bile with anything substantive, there’s not really much to do but strut and swagger like Mick Jagger at a rooster convention, crowing to your fellow cocks about how nasty that despised out-group is. From inside the chicken coop it may sound very convincing, but to outsiders it’s just a bunch of empty noise.
It may be that the some atheists have internalized the “it’s disrespectful to criticize religion” meme-plex to such a degree that they have strong visceral (and perhaps unconscious) reactions when encountering passionate criticism of religion.
Instead of taking the content of the religious criticism at face value, they instead think of the hurt feelings of thousands of old religions grandmas. And then of course they think of someone hurting the feelings of their own dear sweet grandma, and this naturally makes them angry. And all this happens just below the level of conscious awareness, testifying to the power of this dastardly meme-plex.
How’s that for a bit of armchair psycho-analysis?
You’re exactly right, Ophelia. It is a an emotional dislike, and it is self-regarding. It’s alarming to me to discover, in the past few years, just how many genuinely smart, erudite, educated people (and people who are themselves atheists) are so aesthetically/emotionally turned-off to explicit criticism of religion that they really do take leave of their senses. They really do abandon the rules of ordinary intellectual argumentation, and work strenuously to pass off their emotional discomfort with (certain, very select) types of conflict as reasoned.
And they’re wholly unaware of it. Stangroom and Baggini-and many others-are emotionally and aesthetically revolted by explicit, uncompromising atheism. I don’t know why, but they are. Their revulsion is so deep-seated they literally cannot see that their reaction is the kind of unfair, craven, toadying-to-power they’d rightly criticize in intellectual opponents on any other topic.
Discovering just how many atheists will throw the outspoken under the bus because of this, however, has truly shocked and depressed me. What was it you called this, “the great sorting?”
Yikes, apologies for the typographical errors above – they’re ugly. :-(
Atheist A struts down the aisle of a church with loud hailer and sandwich board while a service is in progress and proclaims his position.
Atheist B walks up and down outside the church while a service is in progress doing the same thing.
Atheist C hires space on the side of a bus and posts up a moving atheist billboard.
Atheist D starts an interactive website and there she publishes articles critical of positions taken by various people on various religious matters.
These four ways of behaving are not morally equivalent. The supreme test: my little old grandmother, who was quite religious, would have found A’s behaviour to be obnoxious and deplorable and she would have called the police. B’s she would have found to be to be distinctly odd, and C’s to be a waste C’s money. But she would have defended their freedom of speech.
She died before the rise of the Web, but even if she had not, I doubt she would have been interested in it. She might have turned up commenting here, and if she had, she would have been against the mainstream.
Needless to add, that would have forced me to to reconsider my position. Blood is after all thicker than water. ;-)
The more people are confronted in their beliefs, and the more unavoidable that is for them, the more morally dubious it becomes. But situations where they can switch off, change channels or click onto another site present no problem IMHO.
I think the big problem with this kind of argument is that it misses something fairly basic in philosophy – the whole point to argument ad populum, its inverse, ad hitlerum and ad hominem etc… being fallacies.
Does Julian agree with the letter? Yes, he does. Otherwise how divisive it was, or how it has become a bandwagon, or how unpopular it is wouldn’t have made one iota of a difference.
And in the end it shouldn’t actually make a difference. It is irrelevant, and that is the big thing Julian’s post boils down to – one big irrelevancy.
“The supreme test: my little old grandmother, who was quite religious…”
Ian, I’m thinking the grandma meme is part of the “don’t offend religious sensibilities” meme-plex.
A clever survival mechanism for that replicator.
Well the important thing is that they’ve found a way to feel morally superior to both religious people and outspoken atheists.
I think it’s wrong to think of this explicit ‘othering’ of gnu atheism as anything but a political move. It is an acceptance that certain positions on the God question are beyond the pale of polite public utterance and this includes the position of publicly stating that there is no evidence for the existence of God and whats more, following up the consequences of this position (i.e., regarding things like gay rights, stem cell research, birth control etc.) To do so defies the many claims of the popular religions and therefore means you are taking a position in opposition to them – something that simply will not do. People like Mooney realized this several years ago and others with a media presence are frequently coming to the same conclusion – hence the spate of ‘I’m an atheist but’ articles of late. It seems necessary for them in this context to make it clear, in a public way, that they are not one of those nasty gnu atheists despite the fact that their views on individual issues are almost identical.
Charles (@#8): I think the real meme dynamics involves believers wanting to shut gnuaths up in all contexts, which I think is indefensible. But switching ideological positions can be a traumatic business for some people. Ideological and religious change happens in an individual because the old one no longer works nor can be adjusted or modified satisfactorily.
Consequently I hold that invading someone’s space to challenge their religion is wrong; but otherwise, the right to challenge the religion per se is always justified.
I would agree with your points, but there are too many other comments. all of which agree with you, so I am going to have to disagree, as I have to be different.
So there.
Before the new atheists wave entered the building the discussion about religion and atheism was a particular feud of professional philosophers (like Julian), and there the general consensus was that it was something very complicated that only sophisticated thinkers with academic background in philosophy could grasp. Then the new atheists came and did just what the little girl in Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” did: They showed that, as George Carlin would put it, “religion is bullshit” and that it is ok to say so. They showed something that everybody knew but nobody dared to say: That religion and the existence of God as philosophical subjects are not deep and complicated but that they can be dismissed with easy, simple and devastating arguments that even Forrest Gump could master. And this new atheist “revelation” is, in my opinion, what all theologians and many professional – accomodationists, faitheists…- philosophers cannot stand.
What I can’t understand about Julian Baggini’s rather lacklustre performance is that he must know that religion is desperately trying to make a comeback in democratic societies. And after Baroness Warsi’s speech about religious participation in government programmes, I should have thought that the danger posed by religion to democratic process itself is becoming much more clear.
Here in Canada religion is playing an increasingly large role in government, with government ministers supporting fringe evangelical crazies who think that abortion should be outlawed, that gay marriage should be banned, and that many other things about which Canadian society had reached a reasonable consensus should be rolled back in response to evangelical Christian sensitivities and convictions. It is extremely troubling to find religion beginning to make its effect felt in a society where religion had been largely privatised. Largely, I think, because of the influence of Islam, the church is starting to claim the same kinds of recognition and respect.
It may have been true, in the more halcyon days of democratic consensus, that everyone, including the religious, privatised questions of faith or belief or Weltanshaungen, in the same way that Baggini would like to see atheism restricted to rather anodyne reflections on life and society; but this is no longer the case, and in order to be effective voices in our society we need to be right up, front and centre, like the religious voices are. People accuse atheists of being strident and intemperate. But surely nothing in the last week has been quite so intemperate (as well as oxymoronic) as some of the pope’s remarks (not to mention Cardinal Kaspar). Accusing atheists of responsibility for the moral outrages of Nazism is almost as bad as accusing the atheists for the moral outrages of the catholic church. So, I can’t understand Baggini’s tepid response to a letter of protest that he apparently agrees with. Why does it not seem to him that these are now important public questions, that must be dealt with publicly? That’s what I can’t understand.
Ah, now, there’s a real possibility, Flea. Our posts crossed, so I did not get the opportunity to reflect on your comment before adding my own. But it is a possibility. Philosophers like Julian Baggini don’t like the idea of the discussion of atheism escaping the guild. But surely, as the editor and co-founder of The Philosophers Magazine, as well as a number of popular books about philosophy, he should celebrate widespread discussion of philosophical questions. Or does he just think that philosophy, in order to retain credibility, needs to keep out of the rough and tumble of public life, where emotion also is often brought into play? Is this too much like Protagoras for his liking, thinking that we should retreat to the Academy or the Stoa where these issues can be confined to the few who take an interest in “pure” philosophy (although even the Stoa were public places, and brought philosophy into the city centre)? Isn’t philosophy’s sequestration in the university a modern problem, rather than philosophy’s accustomed place?
It’s interesting, in this connexion, to reflect on something in yesterday’s NYT, where philosopher and boxer Gordon Marino says:
My daughter, who is studying for her PhD in philosophy just now, calls philosophy of blood sport. Surely, Julian is not unaware of the combative nature of philosophy arguments, occasions when, it seems, some philosophers are prepared to threaten other philosophers with pokers, no less! Why should philosophy, translated to the public sphere, be any less of a blood sport than it is in the academy?
Hamilton: When you dislike something but can’t really back up your bile with anything substantive, there’s not really much to do but strut and swagger like Mick Jagger at a rooster convention, crowing to your fellow cocks about how nasty that despised out-group is. From inside the chicken coop it may sound very convincing, but to outsiders it’s just a bunch of empty noise.
I’m pretty much with Dawkins, but I did get an unintentional bit of introspection when I read your comment: when I first read it I had to go back to the beginning of your post to determine whom you were referring to; the gnu atheists or the accomodationist crowd. I guess there is a perception of both stances that could fit either foot.
Baggini confuses the hell out of me. I’ve read articles by him that made me want to stand up and applaud. He can be uncompromising and principled at times — and then all of a sudden it’s like he gets cold feet and is all like, “Wait, some people somewhere probably think I’m a jerk. I don’t want that!”
jay
Heh – yes, exactly. The anti-new atheist atheists claim to dislike the new atheists because we strut and swagger like Mick Jagger at a rooster convention, crowing to our fellow cocks about how nasty that despised out-group is – so they spend a lot of time strutting and swaggering like Mick Jagger at a rooster convention, crowing to their fellow cocks about how nasty that despised out-group is. It’s all very reflexive, and quite funny.
Of course it’s always possible that any kind of protest or engagement or dissent has elements of vanity or groupishness or other bad qualities, but if you just say “well those people are just all about Me Me Me so they’re terrible and bad and wrong” for that reason, then you rule out any kind of dissent. If the mere act of differing from the majority is treated as equal to conceit and groupthink – well the implications are so obvious I won’t even bother finishing the sentence.
Why is it wrong to create division? Disagreement is essential to improving our understanding of the world. Rejection of division is characteristic of places like North Korea. Anyway, theists disagree with me and the world is full of buildings they put up in part so they could express their disagreement with people who don;t agree with them. Sauce for the goose.
James Sweet: “Baggini confuses the hell out of me. I’ve read articles by him that made me want to stand up and applaud.”
Yes, this, absolutely. I rate Baggini really highly, but I sometimes I don’t understand his behaviour at all.
I don’t think so, though I’m not sure. But what I do know is that he wants TPM to be impartial – to have no position, so that philosophers of any position will feel able (welcome etc) to write for TPM. That’s the stated reason for wanting to distance TPM from me: I have a strong position, so if my name remained on the masthead as Associate Editor, philosophers who take a different position might not feel able (welcome etc) to write about that position for TPM.
So what that seems to imply is that Julian himself wants not to be associated too strongly with any particular position. I’m not sure if that’s really his view or not…I’m not sure if he feels a duty to be overall neutral and impartial and flexible on all subjects. But it could be that he feels a need to compensate for the atheism book, for the sake of TPM.
Of course, if that’s it, I think it’s crazy. I think it’s crazy as it applies (or is said to apply) to me, and I think it’s crazy if it applies to Julian and/or anyone else who works for or owns TPM. I think it’s crazy to undertake to have no position.
But it is, at least, different from social cowardice. But alas it’s not really different enough, and the effect is the same. I think the application to me is quite remarkably illiberal.
Well, if that’s why he doesn’t think he should be up front and personal about his own philosophical point of view, then I think he’s doing both himself and philosophy a disservice. Philsophy, surely, in some sense, should be normatively against faith, since faith itself is, on any normal understanding, contrary to reason. That was Pascal’s point. And Kant’s as well, who as he said did away with certainty in order to make room for faith. I don’t know that he altogether succeeded, but at least he remained below the king’s radar. As I recall his Religion within the limits of Reason alone was severely criticised by the powers that be.
For all these reasons, and especially because so many philosophers of the Enlightenment had to qualify their remarks for fear of the censor, it would seem to me more appropriate for TPM contributors, editors, owners, or founders, should be quite blunt about their stands regarding belief, whatever that stand is. That, in my experience, doesn’t scare believers away, though the opposite fault, of being overly respectful of religion, is that the stand that is taken, might well hold non-believers at arm’s length. This is a philosophy magazine, for goodness sake, not a sectarian religious rag.
The Guardian editorial castigates those who didn’t have respect for the sincere faith of this cruel and thoughtless man, which is what I consider him to be. But why should they have such respect? At the beginning of the editorial it speaks of the pope’s “unbending and in some senses cruel conservatism.” Well, that is the product of faith, that is the kind of faith that led him to make outrageous and bitterly disrespectful remarks about unbelievers, and about secular British society. There is need here to call a spade a spade, since the pope is not going to listen anyway, and it is important that the damage done by his visit is mitigated by vociferous dissent. If, as Geoffrey Robertson suggests, there is reasonably be thought to be a criminal case here to answer to, to a higher tribunal than the Vatican, then it is right to say so, and to protest his visit to a great nation in the guise of something good and holy. Shockingly bad reporting, though one editorial in the Guardian did seem, in my view, to hit the nail right on the head. The have apparently thought better of it. Pity.
Yes, I was thinking as I posted that link that they’d undone that editorial you pointed out on Saturday.
It’s particularly revolting that they admit the unbending and cruel conservatism, and then crap on people who object anyway. The Guardian sneering at protesters for “traipsing” through London – !
Something else occurred to me about Baggini’s editorial:
The only assassination plot I’m aware of against any religious leaders is that Obama’s White House is targeting a Muslim cleric named Al Awlaki or something similar for assassination. Obama, by the way, is not a vicious, militant anti-theist, but supposedly a quite liberal, modern, progressive sort of Christian. And a political centrist. In fact, Obama’s done everything he can to avoid taking part of any polarizing dispute whatsoever. And yet this religious and political moderate, this man of the middle is targeting religious leaders for assassination.
Geez, I would hate to see what those extremist atheists would do.
Also, I’m betting that supporters of Obama’s assassination measure are much more religious on average than those against. Any takers?
As TV tropes puts it:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StupidNeutral
>10,000 people marched to say, in various ways, “no” to Papal authority. This is remarkable, nothing like it in Britain for generations: the highpoint of protests around the last Pope’s visit in the early 1980s was a letter from Barbara Smoker in the Times.
Those 10,000+ people have been attacked from all sides. By the Catholic Church, obviously, but also by the vast majority of not only conservative but also liberal and left-wing commentators across all media. Almost universally, there has been hysteria that so many people wanted to make their displeasure known in public. The Protest the Pope movement was painted as essentially Paisley-ite Orange; purveyors of hate. The critics fundamentally don’t get why traditionally apathetic atheists (“militant atheists”? no such thing) were so annoyed on this occasion. Baggini certainly didn’t get it.
Sure the Catholic Church also does some useful charitable work. So does Hamas. Doesn’t mean you give up your critical faculties.
Dan
Baggini refers to an “assassination plot”. He hangs quite a lot on it.
The six people arrested at gunpoint were all subsequently released without charge, it having been established there was never any credible threat in the first place:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8011784/Six-freed-over-Pope-plot.html
In other words, all this terrible “polarising” secularist rhetoric that Baggini worries about led to precisely no atmosphere of assassination plots whatsoever, and when Baggini says,
what he really means is,
Thanks Julian!
Dan
This is a fantastic post, especially this part:
That nails it. Absolutely nails it. (And thank you again for mentioning/linking to my post! It means a lot to me)
Well, my pleasure. It’s very worrying. If it worked that way for you, it surely worked that way for a lot of people – not least because it was meant to, and these guys are no slouches at the fucking people up business. And it’s such a foul thing to do. We know this. Imagine a parent telling a child, in a public place, that she is rotten to the core, horrible horrible horrible – that parent might well get hauled up on abuse charges. These people are not nice. Liberals and atheists shouldn’t be telling other liberals and atheists to go along with the status quo and pretend that the Catholic church is a fount of compassion.